Franz Liszt composed his Prometheus in 1850, numbering it No. 5 in his cycle of symphonic poems when he revised it in 1855. The work is based on the Greek myth, Prometheus.
In 1850, Franz Liszt composed an overture and eight choruses with orchestra accompaniment for Johann Gottfried Herder’s Der entfesselte Prometheus (Prometheus Unbound), a mythological work of thirteen scenes meant as a sequel to Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. This was to be performed for the Herder Festival scheduled for August of that year in Weimar. Liszt gave indications for the orchestration, and from these notes Liszt’s helper Joachim Raff produced a score which was used in the first performance. This concert commemorated the unveiling of a monument to Herder on August 24, 1850. In 1855 Liszt revised both the overture and the choruses, which resulted in the expansion of the overture to a symphonic poem and the choruses to a concert stage work.
The work that was composed to illustrate the imprisonment, pain, hope, and the final triumph of Prometheus turned out to be incomprehensible to the contemporary public due to the many dissonances that accompany the piece. The choral parts ended too soon and were unusable, while the overture acquired own life thanks to the multiple intentional executions and direction from Hans von Bülow.
Conductor: Bernard Haitink & London Philharmonic